PhD Student

Naomi Jaye is an artist, filmmaker, educator and PhD candidate in the Screen Cultures and Curatorial studies program at Queens University. Naomi's main research interest lies in research-creation, through which she explores the architecture of installation and immersive experiences. Naomi holds a MFA from York University and is a lecturer at Toronto Metropolitan University.

William Jennings is a PhD student in the Film and Media department. He holds an MA in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies from Queen's University, and a BA in Art History and Visual Studies from the University of Victoria. Interests include slow cinema, continental philosophy, memory, materiality, and new media. Not to be confused with the 41st US Secretary of State.

Jung-Ah Kim (She/her) is an interdisciplinary researcher/artist based in Canada. She is a PhD candidate in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies at Queen’s University and received her MFA in Documentary Media from Northwestern University (2019) in Chicago. Her research centres on investigating her relationship with a discovered Korean traditional carpet in Canada.

Michele Lawson is an internationally recognized journalist and social justice media producer. Since graduating from Queen’s University with a BAH in Film, she has worked primarily in the charitable sector advocating on behalf of highly vulnerable individuals. As an MA student, she is interested in the ethics of representation and consent as it pertains to engaging those with lived experience in social justice media projects and programs. Her current focus includes building a case for supporting social change to help abandoned children in Muskoka by employing community-based participatory research (CBPR).

A PhD student in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies, Faten considers herself an activist artist who seeks to contribute to the appreciation of various cultures and acceptance of the others in her own community and around the world. She works with various mediums ranging from handicrafts to digital photography and video to create her sight specific installations.

Lindsay K. Muir is a Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies Ph.D. student within the Film and Media department at Queen’s University. She recently completed her M.A. in the same department with her thesis, Where the Willow Meets the Moon: Lessons in Settler Curation Through Indigenous Storytelling. Prior to graduate school, Lindsay earned a double major in Art History and English Literature with a minor in World Cinemas from McGill University. Her current research revolves around the representations of Celtic and Indigenous women in various media.

Naomi Okabe is a media artist, writer, and creative researcher working at the intersection of documentary and speculative fiction. She is currently pursuing a PhD in the Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies program (Film and Media, Queen’s University), where she is thinking about space media and decolonial outer space imaginaries. Naomi’s films have premiered at festivals such as Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival and Kingston Canadian Film Festival, and her writing is soon to be published by Silver Press, Mattering Press, and KOSMICA Magazine. Naomi also co-runs Séance Centre, a record label and publisher.

Heather is a PhD student in the Screen Cultures and Curatorial studies program. Her research focuses on found footage horror films, including the cultural history of the genre and themes of surveillance within it. She is also interested in adaptation theory, screenlife horror films, and the interplay between reality and image.

Emily Sanders is a first (ish) year PhD student in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies. Her research focuses primarily on Canadian film, and investigates the abject within the genre. Other research interests include rural cinemas in Canada; affect theory; aesthetics in film; horror and the monstrous; and film-philosophy. Her (current) favourite film is Morvern Callar by Lynne Ramsay.

After graduating from Queen’s University with a Major in Sociology and a Minor in Film, Daniel transitioned to a Masters program in Cultural Studies, where he wrote his thesis “Hays Gone By: The Proto-Feminism of Pre-Code Hollywood and the Films of Mae West”. As an aspiring PhD student in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies, Daniel is continuing his studies of transgression within Hollywood cinema, specifically as it relates to the Hollywood Production Code. Outside of the classroom, Daniel also makes video essays analyzing art-house cinema and popular film on YouTube under the name Eyebrow Cinema.

I'm only really curious about why we live: what kinds of faith subtends the mechanics of our day-to-day survival; the manner & the style through which we express our vitality. In the language of the University, I translate this curiosity into such terms as "experiential performance-based research": for my PhD I want to gather a collective of multimodal artists who are interested in spirituality and mystical experience to work at the limits of their practices, and to dissolve their limits into the mutation-structure of the group. Call it a cult but with no centre, no dogma, no direction.